Rule-based Categorization Strategy And Examplar-based Categorization Strategy In Category Learning

How do people use rules and exemplars in category learning? The author addressed this issue by three experiments. Experiment 1 explored whether the subjects only used the rule-based categorization strategy after changing the category structure in Erickson and Kruchke's experiment so that the rule's boundary was more conspicious. Contrary to experiment 1, the author examined the possibility that the subjects would use the examplar-based categorization strategy exclusivly when faced with more complex category structure in experiment 2. In experiment 3, more meaningful materials were used to examine the conclusions found from the first two experiments. The results showed that the subjects would only use the rule-based categorization strategy when the rule was easy to grasp, and they would use the examplar-based categorization strategy when the task was harder. The same trendency was also found in more meaningful materials. These results suggest that the rule-based categorization strategy is the faulted strategy in category learning, and that the examplar-based strategy would be used only when the rule is difficult to be extracted .